Being Human
Philip Gerstein

Epigraph:
“...we will go from here, where we are not,
to there, where there is nothing to obstruct us.”
~Brian George "Masks of Origin"

A Summer of Our Discontent

It Matters what we call ourselves.

This posting was started in the long summer of 2024. I received an invitation to submit artwork to yet another competition, accompanied by the solicitation of a few tens of dollars for the privilege of (potentially) being judged in. That is part of a routine of being an artist these days. Many call themselves artists; all would like to exhibit; and why, you might ask, shouldn't the galleries, local art societies, and even museums take some material advantage of it?.. In any case, they do... .

Now, not all visual art exhibitions are created equal -- and I am not referencing their relative, for the lack of a better word, prestigiousness, just their stated purpose. So, at one end of a continuum, some exhibitions function on a purely visual level. Others, along with the visual impact, may speak to more theoretical issues, of concern mostly to people keeping track of such things; those could be art historians, or people interested in social & cultural trends, perhaps even neuroscientists or linguists or specialists in interpersonal communication. The range is thus (barely) limited only by imagination. And it's the artists on whom all of this economy, the whole ecosystem rests -- firstly upon their creations, and then, in no small measure, upon their boundless (read: desperate?) need for their work to be seen. But I digress... .

We have last paused (a-temporarily) in the long summer of 2024... and the information highway is alive with both hopeful and discomforting news of the coming of Artificial Intelligence (which everyone soon will be calling by its cute and friendly acronym, AI). First, we are introduced to its avatar, the "Large Language Model", making a major contribution to further trivializing our online cacophony. In the air is a pervasive feeling, of this Artificial Intelligence biding its time, increasing its reach -- until a prophesied qualitative leap, an imminent profound disruption of our sovereign realm. Will it displace the creatives not only in their jobs, but even in the creative act itself?

Well, the artists are frequently ahead of the cultural curve, along the leading edge of our societal Zeitgeist -- so some quick reaction to this serous issue was practically guaranteed. Thus, I was hardly surprised by the chosen topic of two proposed exhibitions, to take place almost simultaneously in New York and Boston, as well as a proposed conference later that Fall.
All were titled Being Human .

The significance of it is obvious in retrospect, but at the time what was significant to me, was my personal inclusion -- since at least one of these competitions defined Being Human generously, and specifically so as not to exclude abstraction. There is a multitude of artists working today for whom abstraction has become a common language, the language developed over the past century of ceaseless innovation. As for myself? -- can I possibly stay away, being both human and abstractionist!?.. I submitted to the inevitable -- and submitted the three required painting images, seen below.

  "Across the Span of Time",  30 x 24 in. (76 x 61 cm),
  Flashe & acrylic on wood panel, 2022

  "Rescue Me",   24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm),  Flashe, acrylic,
  glass beads, & mixed textural media on wood panel, 2023

  "Extreme Butoh",  36 x 36 in. (91 x 91 cm),
  Oil stick, acrylic, flashe, & mixed media on wood panel, 2021

For me, it involved an interesting branching set of choices, though made with a slight trepidation. No, I had no doubt of their quality, or their potential applicability to the subject of Being Human -- but of their reception as a group. You may have noticed that the Art World of the past several decades has been trying mightily to catch up on diversity and inclusion (or was it just words?..) -- but that inclusion typically does not include the diversity within an artist's production. The old, 19th century presumption of consistency as a mark of professionalism evidenced by a recognizable signature style, has remained a major expectation on the part of the art critics, museums, art historians -- and thus unchallengingly expected by the public. Most importantly, such expectation is doubly enforced by art galleries, with their obvious bias towards offering dependable and recognizable line of products.

That is, however, inimical to how a significant number of artists prefer to work, or what they need in order to create. In reaction, witness, for example, what Philip Guston wrote about art dealers:

"There is no [triple underlined] relationship between my desires, ambitions, and the needs of a dealer. The total conformity of painting now that we see is absolutely deadening to my spirits. Its conventionality. Its domesticity."

There's a significant portion of artists (myself obviously included and advocating for the validity of this approach), who are able to utilize successfully more than one style/mode of artwork at the same time, switching between them freely and with great effect. The readers of Scene4 might recall my passionately expanding on this subject before, particularly in my longer review of the
Philip Guston retrospective* (Oct. 2022.)

In sum, submitting diverse artwork to a competition is still most probably a strategic mistake; contrasting the 3 modes of painting in my submission could easily result in a quick rejection. Then, what Freudian mystery am I playing at?.. why indeed would I do such a thing -- to myself?

And yet, I simply could not hold myself back, not on this subject!

Being an Artist and a Human

"Ring the bells that still can ring!
Forget your perfect offering. 
There is a crack in everything -- 
that's how the light gets in!"
~ Leonard Cohen "Anthem"

What we call ourselves, as a species, has always been a statement.

Many tribal societies simply call themselves The People. Indeed, we have and use such a simple and neutral term, Human Being... is how we designate ourselves. Reversing the order of these two words, Being Human , brings up such variously intense and profoundly contradictory feelings!.. -- a sort of a spell held up to our (self)consciousness as members of the species... an ever -changing reverberating incantation... .

Ever since the succinct awareness of the cave paintings, the transcendent symbology of Aboriginal dreamtime, we attempted to hold a mirror to Nature and ourselves. What stares back is well beyond the reflection of our own faces. As our shamans sang the deep vibration in the sinews of our bodies, we followed the traces of meteors in the night sky of our collective memory. Just one energetic level beyond -- emerging straight out of the whale song and the chatter of dolphins, out of the mutual grooming of apes and the gathered wisdom and compassion of elephant matriarchs -- floated unperturbed & lightly anchored, our aspirational human edifice. And as our creations grew both in elaboration and simplicity, our awareness of our own history pushed us through to the levels where our potential could no longer be ignored (talented as we are in that respect). We questioned the sentence of our destinies, we quarreled with our restrictions -- we remembered, dreamed, and repeatedly built. Our escape route was plotted through Baroque storms and Rococo flippancies, through Mannerist elaborations and quotidian Symbolisms. And then, in a deeply considered break, we created a full century of self aware Abstraction, with its aspiration to Universal Language and its practice of unrelenting experimentation... .

And yes... nothing like our current events to concentrate and clarify the recent past, to render it beyond superficial judgement. Something a little unusual is happening, is coming forward into our collective awareness. Not so subtly, we are moved to reflect on the state of human edifice -- that superstructure our ancestors have erected on top of mere survival. And that, now distant summer of 2024, wasn't just another summer coming to an end. It was a Summer of our utter discontent with the human societies we have built.

So, how has the Art World grappled with our latest turn of fortune, with our rise of self awareness? Through most of art history, the recorded response was solipsistic, through the prism of the human body and assuredness of pre-Copernican universe. It was again the 20c., the century of Abstraction, that decisively broke the mold. Welcome to the art of the human condition —
the known unknown, the heart of uncertainty which inexorably connects us to all other life on Earth. Welcome to our terra firma —and our shifting sands. It would appear things have stayed the same -- and yet, they have changed... in the endless cycle of reconsidering ourselves and our place in the world, we found the world we are seemingly responsible for, for the first time... .

To Create

And who will care,
who will chide you
 if you wander away
from wherever you are,
to look for your soul?
~Mary Oliver (1997)

To create is such a notable part of being human. Here is how Philip Guston describes a very human, all-in-one, act-process -result of painting:

"A painting feels lived-out to me, not painted. That's why one is changed by painting. In a rare magical moment, I never feel myself to be more than a trusting accomplice. So the paintings aren't pictures, but evidences -- maybe documents, along the road you have not chosen, but are on nevertheless."

Perhaps, in my seemingly impractical act of rebellion, we've encountered another stage on the "road you have not chosen". Could it be that significant step in a journey to maturity, when a person suddenly realizes that they actually prefer to be known  -- more than being liked.

And does this set of realizations parallel artistic maturity? It certainly can. The other day I came across this quote from Jake Berthot (a subtle and very fine artist):

“One day, after painting for a number of years, this painter walks into his studio and discovers that he is involved with his own history. At that point, the connection he makes with the world changes. Up to that point, he’s trying to connect to the world; after it, the world either connects with him or rejects him, and there is very little he can do about that.”

In emphasizing diversity with this selection of my work, was I trying to find that elusive and contradictory, artistic and human freedom -- a beguiling freedom to partake of this variety not in the name only, but fully. Allowing oneself, and others, to create from this diversity... variety... abundance -- is ineffably, quintessentially part of Being Human.

* "Philip Guston in Boston",  Scene4 Magazine, Oct. 2022 https://www.scene4.com/archivesqv6/2022/oct -2022/1022/philipgerstein1022.html

See in particular the section "An Aside: What's in a Signature".